


Your Light Remains

by KayGryph



Category: Dragon Age: Inquisition
Genre: Dragon Age AU, Emotional Trauma, M/M, Rite of Tranquility, Tranquil Inquisitor, Venatori, forced Tranquility, mild homophobia
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-12-03
Updated: 2015-12-03
Packaged: 2018-05-04 15:46:53
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,460
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5339675
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/KayGryph/pseuds/KayGryph
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“You know what this is, Inquisitor? It’s <i>lyrium</i> – forged in the ancient Imperium by the magisters Sidereal to brand the slaves we took in droves from Arlathan.” Vexis’ black shadow fell over him as the magister advanced. “You feral elves piss yourselves over tales of the ‘lost empire,’ don’t you? Well. Won’t this be <i>poetic.</i>” (Tranquil Lavellan/Dorian Pavus)</p>
            </blockquote>





	Your Light Remains

**Author's Note:**

> I know, I know...I have enough incomplete fics already without adding another, but this idea came to me and I couldn't _not_ write it out. Follow me on Tumblr for upcoming fic updates, drabbles, and shameless ranting about my Inquisitor OC, Thalon Lavellan: [ourinquisitorialness.tumblr.com](http://ourinquisitorialness.tumblr.com/).

_In the long hours of the night_  
_When hope has abandoned me,_  
_I will see the stars and know_  
_Your Light remains._

 _I have heard the sound_  
_A song in the stillness,_  
_The echo of Your voice,_  
_Calling creation to wake from its slumber._

_-Trials 1:2-3_

 

Thalon came to with the taste of blood and sand in his mouth. Rough hands seized him under his arms and dragged him upright, but his legs wouldn’t hold his weight. Voices were yelling, arguing, somewhere, too garbled to make out through the haze of pain.

A gloved hand grabbed him by the hair and yanked his head savagely back, sending a nauseating spike of pain through his skull. Thalon fought the overpowering urge to vomit and wrenched his eyes open, blinking the blood out of his vision.

The desert swam into focus in the moonlight. Well… _almost_ into focus. His right eye was too swollen and congealed with blood to see much of anything. Through his good eye he could make out a ring of canvas tents around a campfire. From the nearest tent hung a white and silver banner, bearing the dragon and serpent of Tevinter. His memory came back to him – the Hissing Wastes, the Venatori ambush, _Dorian_ ––

“D…Dorian!” The name lurched from his throat before he could stop himself, panic taking hold before reason. He barely recognized the sound of his own voice – raw and broken, barely more than a hoarse whisper. He spat a mouthful of blood onto the sand.

“Thalon!” The voice came from somewhere to his right – he couldn’t turn his head to see, but he didn’t need to see to know that voice, even choked with emotion and fear. “You’re _alive!_  Thank the Maker! Are you all right?”

“I-I…” The hand fisted in his hair yanked again, hard, ending his reply in a weak, broken sound. Thalon’s knees buckled, and he sagged against his captors, gasping faintly as his head reeled and he shook with pain.

_“Thalon! Kevesh, get your filthy hands off of him!”_

“That will be enough.”

A tent flap pulled back, and a tall Tevinter man stepped out into the moonlight. Cold, pinched eyes stared out from a severe face with a twice-broken nose and a jutting brow beneath cropped silver hair. His richly patterned robes and the staff he carried gave him away for a magister at once, and Thalon remembered the name of the Venatori lieutenant Alexius had warned them about, the one they’d come here to track down and interrogate – Cassius Vexis.

“So…you’re the elf they call the _Herald of Andraste_?” Vexis seized Thalon’s face in a bruising grip and arched an eyebrow, as though he were appraising a cut of meat for sale at the butcher’s block. “How strange. All _I_ see is one more  _r_ _attus_ spawn of slaves and painted savages who’s clawed his way out of the dirt to pretend he might challenge his betters.” He backhanded Thalon across the face.

“ _Vexis, you fucking bastard, leave him alone!_ ”

Thalon swallowed the choked noise of pain that rose in his throat and forced himself to smile as he fixed Vexis shakily with his one good eye.

“G-Good to know my intelligence…was accurate,” he rasped. “Alexius said you were a coward…and I-I see now how right he was. You must f-feel quite accomplished…to strike a man who can’t fight back.”

Vexis’ mouth curled in a sneer. “Going to cling to your claims of innocence, then, Inquisitor? We both know differently…or was it _another_ knife-eared mongrel named _Lavellan_ who murdered my sister?”

Murder? Thalon shook his head, unable to think. “I-I…I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“Don’t you? Why don’t you ask your manwhore about Cressida Vexis. I’m sure he can tell you.”

“ _Kaffas!_ If it’s me you want, Vexis, here I am! Leave the Inquisitor out of this, he had nothing to do with Cressida!”

“I think not, Pavus. This isn’t about Cressida. Or Vassus. Or Demetrian. Not anymore. This is about the future of the Imperium. _Our_ Imperium.”

Vexis moved behind Thalon, out of his line of sight. Every instinct in his body screamed at him to _fight_ , the hairs on the back of his neck rising on end, but if not for the Venatori bracing him Thalon would barely have been able to stand. In hopeless desperation, he reached for the Veil…but as he’d expected the Venatori had erected a nullification aura around him. Thalon’s heart began to pound dizzyingly.

“The Elder One advised a special treatment for you, Inquisitor…and after today you won’t be a challenge to Him ever again, Anchor or no Anchor. Marcus, Otho – restrain him.”

The first guard let go of Thalon’s hair to twist his arm painfully behind his back. “Son of a bitch, _get your hands off me,_ ” Thalon snarled. The second Venatori tried to gag him, foolishly bringing a hand within his reach. Thalon bit down hard and tasted coppery blood. The Venatori screamed and drew back, swearing at him in Tevene. Thalon kicked out behind him and felt his boot connect with flesh, rewarding him with the satisfying _crunch_ of bone and another curdling scream.

A mailed fist smashed him across the side of his face, an explosion of pain at his temple, and Thalon collapsed onto the sand.

_“THALON! No! Don’t you fucking touch him! I’m the one you want, Vexis! I’m right here! Vishante kaffas, I’ll do whatever you want, just don’t hurt him!”_

They had him on his knees in the sand, his arms pinned at his sides. Thalon fought to pull himself back from the grey edge of consciousness, wanting to tell Dorian to keep his mouth shut, not to do something stupid, that he was fine, he would be fine…but the blood was pounding sickeningly in his ears, the Venatori’s clawed steel gauntlets cutting flesh, and his limbs wouldn’t heed him. It was all he could do to make himself keep breathing in thin, ragged gasps as Vexis appeared again in front of him, in his hand a rod of iron that burned with a familiar pale flame.

“No…g-gods, no…”

“You know what this is, Inquisitor? It’s _lyrium_ – forged in the ancient Imperium by the magisters Sidereal to brand the slaves we took in droves from Arlathan.” Vexis’ black shadow fell over him as the magister advanced. “You feral elves piss yourselves over tales of the ‘lost empire,’ don’t you? Well. Won’t this be _poetic_.”

Thalon thought his heart would burst, it was beating so fast, panic seizing in his chest until he could barely breathe. The lyrium brand was inches from his face, so close he could feel the sickly decay of its raw essence like poison leeching into his blood. All rational thought went out of him, and he screamed and thrashed like a wild animal. _No. No! Gods, Mythal, Fen'Harel, please, anything, anything but this!_

_“THALON! THALON! Vexis, for the love of the Maker, don’t do this! DON’T DO THIS!”_

Vexis grabbed him around the throat, forcing Thalon to stare into his cold and leering eyes as the brand descended.

“Don’t worry, Inquisitor. It will all be over soon…for you, at least.”

_“THALON! AMATUS! I LOV–!”_

White, searing pain drove into his skull as if to split his forehead in two, lyrium fire devouring flesh, and he screamed until the world faded away around him and all he knew, all he could hear, was the sound of his own ragged voice, screaming. A hundred thousand images and feelings and memories flooded his mind – the first time he ever cast magic and brought wilted flowers to life in the palm of his hand, teaching his little sister how to treat a fever with prophet’s laurel, crying naked in Ashala’s arms, _I’m sorry, I can’t_ , the sound of Halahn’s laughter the first time Thalon spoke the word, _vhenan_ , waking in a freezing cell at swordpoint with a hand that burned with green flame, the taste of Dorian’s mouth and the taste of Dorian, screaming Halahn’s name over and over as the light left his _vhenan’s_ eyes, the first time he watched Dorian cast a spell, effortless as breathing, and remembered for the first time in years what _love_ felt like, remembered what it meant to _want_ someone. _I didn’t do it so you’d be indebted to me, Dorian, I did it for you…_

His head was going to explode, too many and too much over and over and over until he thought he would drown, would suffocate in his own memories. He felt fear and pain and joy and regret. He felt grief. He felt love. He felt rage. He felt…he felt…he felt…

…he felt nothing.


End file.
